Meanwhile, apart from the utility value, it is fun to play through miniatures, as they also offer pure chess enjoyment. On the one hand, we see cute checkmates and well-coordinated combinations, on the other, instructive mistakes and the shock of the unexpected. No, we are not talking about players making crude blunders, but rather succumbing to the subtle art of deception.
Because miniatures are all over so quickly, there is often no need for the reader even to use a chessboard, let alone a computer, to understand the reasons why the loser was never in with a chance of reaching the middle game! In the process of selection, the authors, GM Branko Tadic and IM Goran Arsovic, compiled a ‘short list’(!) from more than 10,000 candidate games.
This has resulted in an Encyclopedia of 1636 miniatures, all annotated, played between 1560 and 2014, and thereby covering chess creativity and ingenuity, past and present.
